The debate

Climate change is undeniable. But is human activity causing it, and if so, to what degree? How are current public policies helping or hurting the situation? All these questions and more will be addressed at Spilman Thomas & Battle’s Environmental Forum: Conversations on Climate Change.

We’re thrilled to be bringing world-renowned scientists and policy experts in the field to the stage at the University of Charleston to discuss these issues from both sides of the table–expect an exciting exchange of ideas on the causes and effects of climate change, the prognosis for the future, and what can and should be done to prepare for those changes. We’ll hear from those whose research leads them to believe human activity is having a dangerous impact on the climate, as well as those who believe such theories are overblown and unsupported by the science.

Join us for this unique opportunity to see scientists who rarely share the same stage, presenting a balanced discussion about this important topic affecting our planet, our lives, and our businesses.

Dr. Michael E. Mann, Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University

Dr. David W. Titley, Rear Admiral USN (ret.), Professor of Practice in Meteorology; Professor, Pennsylvania State School of International Affairs; and Director, Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk

Dr. Patrick Moore, former president of Greenpeace Canada

Dr. Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology

WUWT has post on this, the comments are interesting. Apparently there is a ‘consensus’ that I am too ‘nice’, too ‘wimpy’ and too ‘uncertain’ to take on Mann.

The Congressional Hearing that we both appeared in wasn’t a good example, since Mann was able to dominate because all of the Democratic members focused their questions on him.

I don’t think Mann regards me as a pushover; within the last year he insisted that I be disinvited from a debate, ostensibly owing to the Amicus Brief I filed in the Rand Simberg lawsuit. Apparently, for this debate, he either got locked into it contractually or he figures my presence will help him sell his book.

I much prefer the format of the APS Workshop — serious scientists prepared serious arguments and were questioned by serious scientists for almost a full day.

238 responses to “The debate”

It’s hard not to root for you Judith Curry, but alas, this debate is all about the politics of climate change. The Uncertainly Monster is the biggest schtick that clouds the consensus arguments; use it early and often. From the recent “Energy Budgets..” discussion thread, sub-grid systems and microphysics are the achilles heel to the climate equilibrium meme. Use this point to your advantage. Trying to comprehend what Michael Mann wishes to promote at this meeting and trying to devise a strategy to counter his moves I believe are fruitless as his misdirects will take some time to digest and counter.

Play your trump card. The world, and climate sensitivity in particular are uncertain.

You know, from a scientific viewpoint you are correct. The problem is when invoking the “uncertainty monster” as Dr Curry Is want to do, you allow the debate to be framed as “humans are destroying the climate” vs “we are not sure”
With that “false” dichotomy any rational person with little understanding will tend to err on the side of caution.

Everybody is a “Dr.,” so this everything climate change will be resolved like the other summit with N. Korea in June.

Just invite somebody from Ellicott, MD who just lost their business for the second time since 2016 to the meeting. They might have a few practical arguments for people to consider in dealing with climate change at a far lower level than “Dr.”

Ellicott City is a small town in a canyon, the watershed of which has been paved over by megalopolis. This has nothing to do with climate change. 8-10 inches of rain is not climate change, just damn heavy rain.

You do not agree with which part? The canyons? Look at the topographic map of the area. Or the concrete? Millions of tons of the stuff just exacerbates the flooding.

Had the same amount of rain happened in a rural, flat, agricultural region, there wouldn’t have been a peep. We had 20+ inches of rain in a 24 hour period 35 years ago and there were just a lot of flooded corn fields. Nature doesn’t stop doing what it does just because we alter the landscape.

The people at Ellicott rebuilt after the 2016 event because that was considered a once in 1000-year event, and it made sense. When you get a second 1000-year event in a short timespan, you rethink rebuilding unless you can also build a lot of extra protective infrastructure. This kind of thing is occurring more and more as the climate changes. Communities are making tough decisions that often prove wrong because they base them on past statistics, not accounting for change.

The evidence is that hydroclimates have been relatively benign in the 20th century. This will change. Stochastic analysis – the origin of what professionals call annual exceedance probabilities rather than average recurrence intervals – will be revised going forward.

Ellicott MD had floods of similar magnitude in 1868, 1952, 1972 (Hurricane Agnes), & 1997 (TS Eloise). The city sits in a riverbed and like all cities, the natural topography has been paved over, increasing runnoff. It cannot be credibly claimed that the recent floods were caused or made worse by climate change.

No, it is the radiative part of the flux divided by the pure BB radiative flux. Other parts of the flux are not counted which is why emissivities are only a function of the material, not the conditions. The values including for water are mostly near 1. The only surfaces with such low emissivities are things like, appropriately, tin foil.

What’s the non-radiative part of the “flux?” Conduction? Convection? Latent?

Emissivity & the Heat Balance
Emissivity is defined as the amount of radiative heat (part) leaving a surface to the theoretical maximum (pure) or BB radiation at the surface temperature. The heat balance defines what enters and leaves a system, i.e.
W/m^2 IN = (radiative + conductive + convective + latent) OUT

You can define emissivity in a vacuum and it is the same number. Your definition is completely wrong. It is not that ratio. You don’t need to know or even have other fluxes to determine the emissivity because its definition relies only on the radiative emission of a material at a given temperature.
emissivity = actual radiative emission / blackbody emission at the same temperature

The emissivity, as defined in physics, is the same whether in a vacuum or not. The only things with a low emissivity are things like tin foil. Your last paragraph is completely wrong because there you are redefining emissivity to something it isn’t. You need another word for that ratio because you only confuse yourself when you call it “emissivity”. Emissivity is intrinsic to the surface type, and does not depend on the environment.

Judith let me be blunt You need to get some “balls” . I watched you in the congressional hearing and you were too unsure of everything. The science is settled. There is NO global warming so you need to call Michael Mann a liar and provide specific examples of why he is a liar. You have to get angry with this man. He along with James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt are corrupting all of science and this hoax is costing the world trillions of $. My own Prime Minister in Canada wants to spend $35 billion to lower the worlds temp by 0.005 C (Canada’s contribution) at the end of a 100 years; meanwhile China is quadrupling in 1 year increase what Canada will decrease at the end of 5 years. This is utter madness. We skeptics and the rest of the world are counting on you to put Mann in his place. Here are some great talking points.

1) Why did sea level rise faster in early 2Oth century than now and even now is not accelerating?

2) Why do only rural land temperature data sets show no warming?

3) Why did climate scientists in the climategate emails worry about no warming trends? They are supposed to be unbiased either way.

4) Why do some local temperature land based datasets show no warming Ex: Augusta Georgia for last 83 years? There must be 1000’s of other places like this.

5) Why do 10 of the 13 weather stations in Antarctica show no warming in last 60 years? The 3 that do are near undersea volcanic ridges.

6) Why does the lower troposphere satellite data of UAH show very little warming and in fact showed cooling from 1978 to 1997?

7) Why is there only a 21% increase in net atmosphere CO2 ppm since 1980 but yet mankind increased fossil fuel emissions CO2 by 75%?

8) Why did National Academy of Sciences in 1975 show warming in the 30’s and 40’s and NASA in 1998 and 2008 not show nearly as much warming for those time periods?

9) Why has no one been able to disprove Lord Monckton’s finding of the basic flaw in the climate sensitivity equations after doubling CO2?

10) Why has there never been even 1 accurate prediction by a climate model. Even if one climate model is less wrong than another one it is still wrong.

11) Why do most climate scientists not understand the difference between accuracy and precision?

12) Why have many scientists resigned from the IPCC in protest?

13) Why do many politicians, media and climate scientists continue to lie about CO2 causing extreme weather events? Every data set in the world shows there are no more extreme weather events than there ever were

14) Why do clmate scientists call skeptics deniers as if we were denying the holocaust?

!5) Why did Michael Mann refuse to hand over his data when he sued Tim Ball for defamation and why did Mann subsequently drop the suit?

16) Why have every climate scientist that has ever debated the science of global warming lost every debate that has ever occurred?

17) Why does every climate scientist now absolutely refuse to debate anymore?

18) Why do careers get ruined when scientists dare to doubt global warming in public?

19) Why do most of the scientists that retire come out against global warming?

20) Why is it next to impossible to obtain a PhD in Atmospheric science if one has doubts about global warming?

21) Why is it very very difficult to get funding for any study that casts doubt on global warming?

22) Why has the earth greened by 18% in the last 30 years?

23) Why do clmate scientists want to starve plants by limiting their access to CO2? Optimum levels are 1200 ppm not 410ppm.

24) Why do most climate scientists refuse to release their data to skeptics?

25) Why should the rest of the world ruin their economies when China and India have refused to stop increasing their emmissions of CO2 till 2030?

26) Why have the alarmist scientists like Michael Mann called Dr. Judith Curry an anti scientist?

27) Why does the IPCC not admit that under their own calculations a business as usual policy would have the CO2 levels hit 590ppm in 2100 which is exactly twice the CO2 level since 1850.?

28) Why do the climate modellers not admit that the error factor for clouds makes their models worthless?

29) Why did NASA show no increase in atmospheric water vapour for 20 years before James Hansen shut the project down in 2009?

30) Why did Ben Santer change the text to result in an opposite conclusion in the IPCC report of 1996 and did this without consulting the scientists that had made the original report?

31) Why does the IPCC say with 90% confidence that anthropogenic CO2 is causing warming when they have no evidence to back this up except computer model predictions which are coded to produce results that CO2 causes warming?

32) How can we believe climate forecasts when 4 day weather forecasts are very iffy?.

33) Why do all climate models show the tropical troposhere hotspot when no hotspot has actually been found in nature?

34) Why does the extreme range of the climate models increase as the number of runs increases on the same simulation?

35) Why is the normal greenhouse effect not observed for SST?

36) Why is SST net warming increase close to 0?

37) Why is the ocean ph level steady over the lifetime of the measurements?

38) what results has anyone ever seen from global warming if it exists? I have been waiting for it for 40 years and havent seen it yet?

39) If there were times in the past when CO2 was 20 times higher than today why wasnt there runaway global warming then?

40) Why was there a pause in the satellite data warming in the early 2000’s?

41) Why did CO2 rise after WW2 and temperatures fall?

42) For the last 10000 years over half of those years showed more warmung than today Why?

43) Why does the IPCC refuse to put an exact % on the AGW and the natural GW?

44) Why do the alarmists still say that there is a 97% consensus when everyone knows that figure was madeup?

45) The latest polls show that 33% do not believe in global warming and that figure is increasing poll by poll ? why?

46) If CO2 is supposed to cause more evaporation how can there ever be more droughts with CO2 forcing?

47) Why are there 4 times the number of polar bears as in 1960?

48) Why did the oceans never become acidic even with CO2 levels 15-20 times higher than today?

49) Why does Antarctica sea ice extent show no decrease in 25 years?

50) Why do alarmists still insist that skeptics are getting funding from fossil fuel companies ( when alarmists get billions from the government and leftest think tanks) and skeptics get next to nothing from either fossil fuel companies nor governments for climate research?

51) If the Bloomberg carbon clock based on the Mauna Loa data, in the fall and winter increases at a rate of only 2ppm per year; then why do we have to worry about carbon increases?

52) Why arent the alarmists concerned with actual human lives. In England every winter there are old people who succumb to the cold because they cant afford the increased heating bills caused by green subsidies.

53) Why did Phil Jones a climategate conspirator, admit in 2010 that there was no statistically meaningful difference in 4 different period temperature data that used both atmospheric temperature and sea surface temperature?

54) Why does the IPCC still say that the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is a 100 years when over 80 studies have concluded it is more like 5 years?

55) Why do all global climate alarmists say that corals are dying due to bleaching when Dr. Peter Ridd (who has published over 100 papers) has proven that coral bleaching is a defensive mechanism by corals in relation to temperature change in the water.

56) Why does the IPCC still release temperature and sea level data from NOAA and NASA when Tony Heller has proved that those agencies have faked data and made improper adjustments to the actual raw numbers ?

57) How does the IPCC explain that Professor Miskolczi showed that despite a 30% increase in CO2 in the atmosphere in the period 1948 to 2008, the total infrared optical thickness of the atmosphere was found to be unchanged from its theoretical value of 1.87

58) Why has the Global Historical Climate Network temperature data set for ~ 1000 temperature stations in the United States shown no warming over the entire 124 year period when you just take the daily maximum and average it out for the 365 days of the year?

59) Why has the global average downward infrared radiation to the surface shown no increase ever since the CERES satellite started collecting data in the year 2000?

60) Why has the global average outgoing radiation to space shown an increase since 1974 according to the NOAA satellite info?

61) How would Antarctica ever melt if almost all of the land mass never even comes close to 0 C even in summer? Same for Greenland. Does the audience know that even if all of the Arctic melted the sea level wouldn’t rise because the ice is already floating and that if the 200000 glaciers in the world melted; sea level would rise only 400 mm or less than 16 inches?

No! There’s a much better approach. Judith must stay cool, as she always does. She needs to get Michael Mann angry. Then really angry. Then more angry, until he blows a fuse – as he has done in the past. And starts name calling. Then the audience will see who the real Mann – the real Mann that Steve McIntyre, and the “The Hockey Stick Illusion”, exposed so clearly.

Small sampling as to why none of these will be discussed, even by Curry:

2) Why do only rural land temperature data sets show no warming?

Not true. Rural and urban stations show the very same warming.

4) Why do some local temperature land based datasets show no warming Ex: Augusta Georgia for last 83 years? There must be 1000’s of other places like this.

Yes. There are. There must be 3,000s that show warming (at least 2:1). All stations are included, even the ones that show cooling, and together they indicate a globe that is warming.

7) Why is there only a 21% increase in net atmosphere CO2 ppm since 1980 but yet mankind increased fossil fuel emissions CO2 by 75%?

Not all CO2 makes it to the atmosphere. There are many carbon sinks, and it’s the addition of man’s CO2 to the other natural sources that cause the problem. The CO2 increase is nothing short of crazy fast.

9) Why has no one been able to disprove Lord Monckton’s finding of the basic flaw in the climate sensitivity equations after doubling CO2?

Do we really need to revisit why a literature major was wrong? His incorrect charts are legendary.

Scott, your answer to #9 is less than adequate. I admit I do not fully understand Monkton’s proof. However, I have not read any rebuttal from the “mainstream” scientists. To me that means Monkton is on to something. For the CAGW crowd to just dismiss his paper out of hand reminds me of the treatment Einstein got when he first proposed Relativity because he was just a clerk in the Patent office. I am not equating the two men – just comparing the acceptance by the Establishment. The same can be said about the treatment of Svensmark for his contribution (certain radiation helping to form low-level clouds in the atmosphere). The absence of scientific reaction by the Establishment to “intruders” seems not science-like, but politics-like.

There was reaction, although weighing in on a literature major’s idea of what should be happening is not time efficient. I guess my theories on time travel are correct because nobody bothered to correct me.

Monckton got together with disgraced Soon (and that’s not a slight, that’s just what happened to Soon) and produced something that is laughable today. They were pretending that the IPCC was far too high in their projections, and used some cherry-picking to show that the particular warming trend they got from satellite data. This was long before the overly-adjusted data had to be adjusted again. And again.

Anyway, the IPCC was correct about °C/decade. In fact, the past few years went above most IPCC assessments.

Spencer rebutted Monckton at WUWT. Lewis and Curry have refused to talk about it, and no other skeptic has defended Monckton on their blogs. This lack of support is very telling. Monckton is off the rails with that. Note that he bases his sensitivity on numbers from the Lacis model’s response to removing CO2, but he disregards what that same model does in response to increased forcing. His logic is deeply flawed.

The premise is disappointing.
“Climate change is undeniable. But is human activity causing it…”
We should be past that. It’s like “Gravity, does it make things fall?”
A far more interesting question would be “700 ppm by the next century: good or bad?” or “Stable versus rapidly changing climate: which is better for humanity”. These would be challenging because they address the impacts more directly.
Their question gives away what audience they expect.

No, Jim, climate change is undeniable and human activity is causing… some… of it. Half or more, probably. How much will the climate change and what will be the impacts? Those are the questions open to debate, both by science and the rest of us.

We know with good evidence that a doubling of CO2 generates a forcing of about 3.8W/m². Mother nature has done an experiment with our help ( of producing the CO2) during the last 160 years and showed us, that the warming is about 0.35 K/W/m². It’s documented in a recent paper where Judy was the co-author. The warming due to doubling of CO2 should be 1.3 K. It’s ocam’s razor estimating this. This value together with a very low ECS of about 1.7 K/ doubling does not justify any alarmism. This is the core of our knowledge of our climate system. Every other thesis is for scaring the people.

They are going to spend the whole debate on what the meaning of “most” is which will be a complete waste of time. Impacts and trends matter. Planning for impacts matters. Planning for emissions trends matters. If they don’t want this to be a sideshow, they need to debate things that the Paris accord addresses which is from a global perspective.

frank, Occam’s razor is using the raw data to produce an effective sensitivity. The two surest long-term numbers we have are global temperature and global CO2 level and they fit each other well.http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1950/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.01/offset:-3.2
This scaling of 100 ppm per degree C shows effectively 2.4 C per doubling as a transient rate. Lewis’s number used on its face would be hopelessly short of reproducing the warming in the last 60 years, and that is because he makes implicit assumptions about other uncertain multipliers than feedback, and has a reliance on uncertain endpoints rather than fitting the whole period.

JimD: Allways the same? You can’t compare dCO2 vs. dT because there are much more forcings affecting dT . You MUST compare the total forcing vs. the total dT and thereafter calculate the dT vs. dF and you’ll get the solution if you use the undebated value of 3.8 W/ doubling CO2.
In other threads we discussed it so often and you are resisitant of any progress in mind I’m afraid. AND please stop showing wft-graphs as long as there is no possibility to show forcings!

Both Lewis and Lovejoy have said that net anthropogenic forcing is highly correlated to CO2 forcing alone making this a fair thing to plot. With IPCC numbers, the CO2 part is 80% of the total so about 2 C of that 2.4 C per effective doubling is just the CO2 part, the rest being other GHGs minus aerosols. The 2.4 C number assumes other proportionate effects remain proportionate. This percentage could go either way in the future if we reduce aerosols and reduce the relative methane growth as CO2 increases.

Clearly something else is going on because the actual warming has been nearly twice that rate since 1750 (Lovejoy) or 1950 (WfT). Making policy, you need to account for all factors and not use just these low-ball numbers that by themselves would dangerously underestimate the real warming.

You mentioned Occam’s Razor. I give you Occam’s Razor and immediately you want to discount that approach. Note especially in the Lovejoy plot how both CO2 and warming accelerated after 1950. In fact, 75% of our added CO2 and two thirds of the forcing change has been since 1950, so the time scale is very nonlinear because of this acceleration.

““Climate change is undeniable. But is human activity causing it…”
We should be past that. It’s like “Gravity, does it make things fall?””

They broadened the question and caused a problem. Global warming is undeniable. Climate change including: Precipitation. Sea level rise. Ice melting. Attribution on these things is worse than attribution for global warming. Even global warming is bollixed up by the oceans as a whole with most people not following or caring enough to follow what’s going on there. The title suffers not from being too simple like gravity but being too broad.

They do need to get past this. The real debate is on impacts per degree C, and the biggest uncertainty is the amount of emissions between now and 2100 along with the CO2 level at 2100 which is uncertain to hundreds of ppm.

Not one of the panel members has expertise in estimating the impacts of global warming. Only the impacts are relevant for justifying policy and funding. Until these forums start debating the impacts and policy implications, it is simply advocacy for an ideological belief.

Not a real good approach to lead off argument with “Climate change is inevitable” as it plays right into the hands of the opposition. Suggest lead-off with “No one can deny the poor and middle class are being sacrificed on the altar of the elite and their “green religion”. In other words, don’t play defense and do not worry about what the press thinks. They will never be your friend.

Climate changes in natural cycles and manmade CO2 does not cause the natural cycles. It snows more when oceans are warm and thawed, it gets cold after that. It snows less when oceans are cold and frozen, it gets warm after that. Natural climate cycles are normal, natural, necessary and unstoppable.

61 dot point for Judith Curry – belly laughs. My feeling is that climate science has little relevance for policy. This will come as a relevance deprivation shock to many. We cannot predict the future of climate – too many imponderables. So put that one back in the academic box for when someone gets the itch to try again. We can save some dollars. Or put them to better seasonal to decadal weather forecasting.

But whether natural or anthropogenic – there is a small risk of extreme climate change. Climate, like economies, is a member of the broad class of complex dynamical systems. This is the most modern idea in climate science – although it was pioneered in the 1960’s – and one with profound implications. The evidence is clear that climate shifts abruptly – unpredictably and to a greater or lesser extent. The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defined abrupt climate change as a new climate paradigm as long ago as 2002. A paradigm in the scientific sense is a theory that explains observations. A new science paradigm is one that better explains data, in this case climate data, than the old theory. The new theory says that climate change occurs as discrete jumps in the system. The system is pushed by small changes in control variables – orbits, greenhouse gases or even solar UV – past thresholds at which points the balance of ice, dust, cloud and biology shifts. Patterns of ocean and atmosphere circulation shift in response to internal climate dynamics and at a pace determined by the internal dynamics of the system rather than any external factor.

The rational response is to build prosperous and resilient communities in vibrant landscapes. An excellent approach to this is the smart goals of Lomberg’s Copenhagen Consensus and the best way to achieve these goals is with economic freedom and economic growth. Economic growth provides resources for solving problems – restoring organic carbon in agricultural soils, conserving and restoring ecosystems, better sanitation and safer water, better health and education, updating the diesel fleet and other productive assets to emit less black carbon, developing better and cheaper ways of producing electricity, replacing cooking fires with better ways of preparing food, etc. We can sequester as much as 180 billions of tonnes of carbon in agricultural soils and in conserved and restored ecosystems, reduce nitrous oxide and harmful tropospheric ozone and save money on fertilisers, burn methane to produce low cost electricity, reduce the strong climate effects of black carbon and the millions of premature deaths that result from cooking over open fires at the same time. Population, development, technical innovation, multiple gases and aerosols across sectors, land use change and the environment are the broader context – and here we need models of economic freedom and practical bottom up management of global environments.

Greenhouse gas are a blip that will not continue much into the 21st century. Emissions are being addressed pragmatically across a plurality of gases and sectors with a plethora of technologies and systems – underpinned by economic growth and development. The bottom line is that the right questions to ask about climate change are not scientific but about appropriate responses to diverse human and environmental challenges.

If a climate scientist refuses contradictory debates, then, for ideological reasons, he defends a pseudo-science. If a science is official, then it’s pseudo-science, as the past shows. IPCC science is official, so it’s pseudo-science. Elementary my dear Watson…

It will be very difficult to debate with Michael Mann, the greatest liar of our time. He will use all the baseness, all the crooked shots, all the personal attacks, all the lies to unsettle you. You will have to face with courage and competence to put it in front of its contradictions and put it in difficult position. Good luck !

Steve:
>Are you certain it is a strength?
No, but the domain context (both immature and culturally conflicted) strongly supports this. And not acknowledging uncertainty is generally a weakness, albeit in mature domains this may be a minor or even trivial issue.

>In risk planning, which is what climate change is finally about, uncertainty is not your friend.
Uncertainty is never friendly, of course. But in the long run it is far less friendly to sweep it under the carpet, and plan as though it didn’t exist.

>Being certain that there is no problem, is probably the weakest position
In a domain of immature science, taking any policy position based upon hard certainty is a weak position. We can’t determine the relative weakness, because of the uncertainty.

I don’t think any of your above really addresses perceptions re the head-post debate though. The CC domain is well known now to be strongly partisan (in the US). Hence also known, is that hard certainty (on any side) might be associated with partisanship, rather than evidential certainty.

“No, but the domain context (both immature and culturally conflicted) strongly supports this. And not acknowledging uncertainty is generally a weakness, albeit in mature domains this may be a minor or even trivial issue.”

Really? are you certain this domain is immature? Are you certain that your position is strongly supported? Are you certain that not acknowleding uncertainity is a weakness?

You see the problem is you want to have your uncertainty and eat it too.
“uncertainty” about what is the key. Seems to me we are uncertain that extra c02 wont cause a disaster, and with relatively cheap non FF (like nuclear) the path with less risk is to move that direction. It’s a win win.
If extra c02 is no problem, no harm no foul, we’ve replaced coal with nukes. If c02 is a problem, we avoided the harm and kept power cheap.

bottom line, I can use uncertainty to any argumentative end. So you might think it’s your friend, but it’s relatively simple to reframe any uncertainty argument. Greeks knew this.

>You see the problem is you want to have your uncertainty and eat it too.

No. You have attributed this ‘problem’ to me; it is not expressed in my words. If you still think so, be explicit and quote me exactly.

>…So you might think it’s your friend…

I did not say it’s a friend. I specifically said: ‘Uncertainty is never friendly, of course.’ Plus, that acknowledging uncertainty (in this domain), is a strength, relative to stating a hard certainty that perforce must exclude uncertainty, and espc within a debate known also to be highly partisan, so in which an audience knows too that apparent hard certainty is often associated with partisanship. If you have taken my words to mean some kind of support for a climate skeptic specific line of argument or policy (per your continuance below), I mentioned no such line whatever.

>Seems to me…

I have made no statement on the relative advisability of policies regarding AC02. I make none now, regarding yours above or the huge selection of anyone else’s.

>…but it’s relatively simple to reframe any uncertainty argument…

I don’t know about ‘any’ uncertainty argument. But indeed you reframed with your questions above, to imply that nothing can proceed in relation to the real world unless we are fully certain of everything proposed first, and all dependencies. Yet I have made no such argument. You found your reframing simple, but this is likely why it has introduced a position I never took or implied. You should address your concerns to someone who may be making such an argument.

“If extra c02 is no problem, no harm no foul, we’ve replaced coal with nukes. If c02 is a problem, we avoided the harm and kept power cheap.”

No place in North America or Europe is proposing replacing coal with nukes, and North America and Europe are the only places that care enough about CC to propose actual emissions reductions.
The climate change activists are proposing replacing nukes with solar panels, natural gas turbines, and coal. Which is the real reason there are skeptics- if the most fervent believers don’t care enough to take any action that matters, why should anyone think their cause is urgent or serious?
China is proposing to replace coal with nukes, but the western media and climate change activists pretend they are replacing coal with windmills and solar panels.
I would stand up and cheer if all grant money for the study of climate change and subsidies for wind and solar got shifted to research on and support for new nuclear technology. What percentage of the RealClimate, ATTP, and Bill McKibben gangs would be in favor of that? Maybe 2-3% on a good day? How many would march in the streets against it? 40-50%?

Judith When I said you have to get angry with this man, I didn’t mean all through the debate. You should only get angry with him at the end and then slip in the rest of those talking points that wern’t covered in the earlier part of the debate. At that point Mann will have provided many lies and it is then that you can start to get aggressive. Make Mann think at first ; that he is dealing with the same easy going ,Judith the marshmellow, that he thinks you are. If an idiotic governmental official was tellling lie after lie for reasons why he should take your baby away from you ; wouldnt you have to show some emotion at some point? Well there is no difference here. Mann’s policies will make the world a lot poorer place and people will die because of it. They already have in some areas because of the large increases in electricity prices caused by green policies. All because global warming and the 100% renewable energy dream are both nonsense.

All the best Judith. I don’t think you’re wimpy at all but aside from the Senators’ issues you did have a problem that Mann was doing PR while you were doing Science.

Unless your audience are actually scientists, (and no matter who is actually there, you will be talking to the non-scientist world outside the venue) being pedantic about error bars, uncertainty and statistical machinations is not going to carry the day with the general population.

And if Mann is participating it is very unlikely this will be a scientific debate – he’s coming to mop the floor with scientists by being the propaganda man. You already know he has zero issues with personal attacks so expect the worst.

You and Patrick need definitive statements, sound bites that are certain and direct, even if you then explain them in science terms.

Think of it as a Powerpoint presentation – more than 20 words on a screen loses the audience. Make a list of dot-points and leave the text for discussion instead of leading with the explanations.

I would simply point out that there’s published material which supports a climate sensitivity value = X, that higher values of climate sensitivity are based on estimated feedbacks from water vapor and clouds which are highly uncertain.

Unfortunately Dr Curry wont be able to discuss a key subject, which happens to be outside her comfort area: the world is running out of fossil fuels, and we simply won’t be able to keep consuming them as assumed by the IPCC business as usual case (their AR6 version of RCP8.5 is subtly designated the capitalist world scenario, which means the IPCC dialed the political tone even higher).

I would have handy an 11 by 17 inch size graph of surface temperature anomaly at 2 meters from a high quality reanalysis product plotted on a trimester basis, with diamonds marking the El Niño events.

And of course assume that Mann is reading this comment thread therefore be prepared to counter his counters.

Also be careful to take notes on every lie that Mann tells so that you can throw them back at him by stating the real truths. Especially be careful of him producing fake graphs from NOAA and NASA. If you have watched any of Tony Heller’s hundreds of videos you will know that NASA and NOAA have produced fake graphs from fake datasets. Dont let any fake graph be accepted by the audience as truth.

One of Stephen Potter’s rules of gamesmanship was, “My fast to your slow, and vice versa.” You don’t have to play Mann’s game, or let him set the tempo. You don’t have to “top” Mann to win; you can undermine him by stressing uncertainties—doing so will look, to the wise, like a more scientific and reasonable approach. By playing for a draw, IOW, you can prevent Mann from carrying the day—and that is enough to disprove that “the science is settled,” which is the current dominant belief among the “clerisy.” That’s a kind of win. (This is similar to the observation that “sometimes nothing is a real cool hand.”)

Here’s what you do… Come out on stage with a karate outfit (black belt ‘n all) over your clothes and a cinder block. Place the cinder block down on the table before you and before the debate even starts, proceed to smash the cinder block into pieces!* After that, you won’t have any trouble with micky mann.

*you’ll need a five gallon bucket to clean up the mess and divest the karate outfit into (which you can get at your local home depot)…

Global warming and climate change are two different issues. I understand from the physical evidence that temperatures have been going up. The question is how the climate of various regions of the earth react to this.
And will reducing greenhouse gases stop the change? At what scale are the models capable of making predictions? Can these predictions be incorporated into regional models which are likely to do a better job at local modeling?

If I have read you correctly, you support dealing with climate change locally. Design infrastructure to be flexible and allow for extreme events (which, as you have noted, happen anyway, regardless of global warming.).

If the other three men let you talk, I suggest focusing on regional climate change. People have a better feel for their local environmental changes. They are more likely to be convinced. Not by someone from Washington DC, or worse, the UN (just kidding, I support the UN)

Laugh at Mann and his arguments. Nothing more clearly and convincingly deflates an opponent than humor. Remember Reagan saying to Mondale: “There you go again!” to one of his dodgy comments. It showed that the opponent was not to be taken seriously while staying warm and endearing rather than nasty. Treat Mann et al as you would a rather slow child.

Good for you Judith! Use your time wisely as it is in short supply. I offer this: There has never been a creditable empirical scientific study that concluded that increased atmospheric temperature was caused by an increased atmospheric CO2 concentration. Therefore, we are not certain that any change in atmospheric CO2 will cause the (currently) measured increase in atmospheric temperature. Therefore – all efforts to stall or reduce atmospheric CO2 is a waste of money, which could be used for solving more immediate needs, especially the money laundering proposed at the Paris Summit. I see this as the pivotal issue – keep hammering away!

Hi Judy – Perhaps ask Mann what he disagrees with in the Executive Summary of the 2005 NRC report

National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp.https://www.nap.edu/read/11175/chapter/2

He was one of the co-authors and signed off on the report. Since then, he has ignored most of the findings and recommendations.

You could ask the other side why the ‘CO2 trapped heat’ that they say drove the February 2016 record temperature spike wasn’t still maintaining the temperature during the harsh NH 2017/18 winter.

The other side should be asked the question of how did a monotonically increasing minor atmospheric constituent at it’s highest level in modern times cause both the highest temperature spike and then the deepest two-year drop?

If the CO2 theory worked then the warmth in the air in 2016 would have been recycled back into the ocean via ‘back-radiation’ ocean uptake right? So why did the ocean temperature fall during 2016-18 instead of rise or at least maintain according to CO2 theory?

Isn’t it obvious that the atmosphere doesn’t hold heat for long irrespective of CO2 concentrations? Isn’t it equally obvious the atmosphere’s heat is not recycling back into the ocean, irrespective of CO2?

The other side often invokes ‘natural variability’ to fill in the gaps in CO2 theory. Isn’t it obvious natural variability is far and away more powerful than CO2? Isn’t it obvious the ocean wags the atmosphere? Isn’t it then plainly obvious that the ocean defines earth’s natural variability?

If the warmth in the air doesn’t recycle back into the ocean then what is heating the ocean causing natural variability?

“Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a
record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing weather). …

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

S. Schneider wrote Trenberth back and said

“On Oct 12, 2009, at 2:32 AM, Stephen H Schneider wrote:
Hi all. Any of you want to explain decadal natural variability and signal to noise and sampling errors to this new “IPCC Lead Author” from the BBC? As we enter an El Nino year and as soon, as the sunspots get over their temporary–presumed–vacation worth a few tenths of a Watt per meter squared reduced forcing, there will likely be another dramatic
upward spike like 1992-2000.”

The 2009 conversation occurred after TSI had been at record low levels for almost two years. Schneider clearly knew more of the solar cycle influence on temperatures than did Trenberth.

This indicates Schneider deliberately talked out of both sides of his mouth, on one hand saying to the public CO2 was the climate driver, while knowing, as I discovered myself, that the solar cycle influence controls temperatures.

The IPCC science was not scientific in the sense that changes to the system input power were deemed unimportant before adequate evaluation had taken place – so they reversed the ages old null that the sun controlled the weather and climate, similar to Trenberth’s attribution and null stance, which came decades after Hansen’s and Schneider’s original false AGW claims.

The climb to higher temperatures into the 21st century resulted from many higher than average solar cycles back-to-back; and the lack of warming in 2009 and the cold winter in 2017/18 resulted from low TSI.

The 2016 record temperature was driven by the sun’s 2015 TSI peak following several years of TSI warming build-up to the peak.

We need not be bound anymore to the ignorance of the solar cycle influence. The earth warmed since the LIA from high solar activity.

The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

The pause in warming happened because warm thawed oceans increases snowfall. Warm times are necessary to replenish ice on land. It does not snow enough when oceans are cold and frozen.

The travesty is not trying to understand the proper role of water in all of its states. Ice is formed using much energy in and removal from earth of the energy with IR out. That happens best in warm times when the energy that was captured by the oceans is used to produce snowfall that gets sequestered for the cooling that happens later when the more ice advances.

Climate scientists form ice when earth is cold. There is not enough energy in or energy removed with IR out to form ice in cold times. Go back to basic principles. Occam would agree with this.

We need not be bound anymore to the ignorance of the solar cycle influence. The earth warmed since the LIA from high solar activity

Solar in to the NH has been decreasing for ten thousand years. The SH has increased over that same time. Both hemispheres stayed in the same bounds. We have less solar into the NH, now, during this warming, than during the Roman or Medieval warming. We warmed because it snowed less during the LIA and ice depleted and retreated. All cold periods ended because of the loss of ice extent.

Since I’m out in San Diego and unlikely to travel, I hope the debate will eventually be available at the host’s website.

Hopefully you can engage some positive thinking with a bit of humor in addition to facts, caveats and knowledge of paradigm problems.

I’ve always been fond of King Canute’s wily response to his sycophants’ claim that he could stop the tided. Perhaps Mann can stop Hawaiian lava flows or put off the popping of a super volcano. Maybe he can stop the next hurricane season if only his metric projections were infallible. Humility helps.
Joe Nalven

Good luck. Nail him down like Gulliver and degrease thoroughly with Snake OIl remover ;-). Only the facts can be serially validated. Models are not facts, nor proven science. Neither is adjusted tree ring data a substitute for written history.

Will watch with interest. It still saddens me that David Mackay waited until 10 days before he died to nail the key points on energy in public, in terms of what was clearly best and worst and what could and couldn’t deliver on the absoiute energy physics – that he knew better than almost anyone,.

If only he had set out the pure physics store on energy in serious public forums as soon as he left the DECC ;-(, but he was a nice guy and academic and always thought it unhelpful to confront those who would deceive us for their own profit, and let the informed listener decide which were facts and which were not……………

Which of course, they cannot without the necessary formation I think truly expert and independent academics have a duty to succinctly conclude what the facts currently mean, rather than explain what the facts are, and to communicate those conclusions in summary ways to lay people. In terms that are meaningful in the audience context. From Maslow’s Health, wealth and happiness, upwards, etc… perhaps the chair should ask how many in the audience have physical science degrees, to help pitch answers?

Good luck with that.

Just what I think, based on communicating technology to businessmen in commerce for decades, as a physicist selling smart technology stuff that adds value to real business operations = profit. What the decision makers with the money to spend care about is all that matters in this case, not the technology or how it works, as long as the lawyers confirm it’s legal and their techies say it’s OK, mostly. Hope that helps in some way, I assume you know most of it by now. Including answering the questions you want to answer within other answers ;-)

Could you pull a Feynman experiment on Mann?
“I believe that has some significance, for our problem”.

A few choice TV sized graphs on sensible scales showing lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature over extended periods.and the warm period denial of Mann’s data series to hand? How may people know that reality of change is 0,8 degrees in 140 years, up and down during the industrial revolution, or that temperatures have risen by 0.2% for a 42% rise in CO2, etc. ?

Granny and Eggs? I am sure yourself and Patrick will n be more powerful as a double act than separately, given the chance by the chair. Good luck again. At least you know your antagonists approach and how best to deal with it. I look forward to the video on You Tube.

It’s not that important to win the PR event — this isn’t an election debate or a sales pitch, it’s a scientific debate. Let Mann strut around making bombastic claims, turn off air conditioners and open windows, call people names. Safe bet that Curry’s presentation will be more factually accurate and more persuasive to those serious listeners who hew to scientific principles.

It’s really not a debate. The rules don’t seem to contemplate the panelists’ questioning or commenting on each other’s statement. This is followed by questions from the audience. If the moderator strictly enforces this format, then there may be little opportunity for the panelists to engage each other.

But I agree that “winning” the encounter will be in the eye of the beholder and that Dr. Curry cannot lose if she states her case as clearly as she’s done in the past. Emphasizing uncertainty and stressing the dearth of evidence to support the alarmist view happens to be practicing classical science as well as being the truth. Getting into an argument with someone like Mann, who will say anything to “win”, would be a mistake, IMO.

While this is the approach I would take, Dr. Curry is the one with the resume to protect and I’m sure she will approach this in her own way. All these comments saying she needs to be tough and combative and “different” from her past are not only presumptuous but very likely to be wrong. She has her own style and her best way will be her own way.

I’d assume that this debate will address policy issues. I’d like to see all the participants comment on the conflict between nuclear and 100% renewable energy, especially the contrasting visions of California gubernatorial candidate Michael Shellenberger vs Mark Jacobson.

JC!
I watched the Senate Committee hearing and really can’t believe that he still able to speak credibly. Why are there no consequences for his lies to the committee?. Lead this tool into a logical box and throw away the key.

This might be a good opportunity to ask Mann some pointed questions about his undisclosed, failed Pearson R squared results for his original hockey stick paper. A good hook for this would be if he starts claiming he’s been exonerated by a whole bunch of commissions.

“Apparently there is a ‘consensus’ that I am too ‘nice’, too ‘wimpy’ and too ‘uncertain’ to take on Mann.”

I think you have missed out what was the most pertinent comment, which is that your comments are often too nuanced.

On the one hand we have a rather aggressive person (mann) stridently confirming there is dramatic human caused climate change and backing it up with very clear graphics that SEEM to prove his point.

On the other we have you, being far more circumspect, far more nuanced, far more polite..

I don’t know the precise format of this debate or what props are being used, but whilst circumspect and nuanced and polite might work on a blog post- whereby the fine details are Endlessly discussed and link and counter link exchanged-if the debate is a bear pit, the one with the loudest, shoutiest and clearest message is likely to come out as top Bear.

In the land of binary thinking, complicit MSM brainwashing and control knobs on the brain, yes, not only is it nuanced but most likely beyond the cognitive abilities of many warmists. When everything is being portrayed as a result of AGW, it’s tough for some to visualize a continuum of attribution.

it refers to the size of it, not its aggressiveness. The clue is in the word ‘uncertainty.’

Her uncertainty monster is much bigger than your uncertainty monster, but even so its rather shy

Curiously as you well know the Royal Society owned the biggest uncertainty monster of all in the form of its motto, but as its swathed in latin perhaps its not always recognised as the original ‘uncertainty monster.’.

Divide among ‘alarmists’ and ‘skeptics’ is skeptics believe focus on climate detracts from more substantive development goals and ignores existing risk, alarmism often presents ineffective, symbolic gestures that may add risk rather than reduce it.

Declining CO2 emissions may present even greater risk than weather change from warming. Growing population in the developing world may be dependent on rising CO2, increasing precipitation. Too fast of a roll-out of BECC by developing world coupled with growing natural land biosphere sinks may out compete subsistence farming in developing world for atmospheric CO2.

Ask, What Might an Anti-Fragile U.S. Energy Policy Look Like?
Germany demonstrated in ideal conditions, wind and solar become a significant economic burden around 20% of base (the US is a long way from hitting that limit). Australia demonstrated importance of organic growth, if we wait for “best solution” and rapidly scale, we may massively scale a missed defect.

Should natural gas be reserved for dealing with variability and heating (is also using it for baseload betting too much on low prices and stable supply)? Is exporting coal efficient, should we be using coal here and exporting more energy dense resources?

What happens if we suffer pro-longed artic blasts in the near future (as have evidently happened in the past)? Do we have a flexible supply of heat and electricity? Can NG supply both heat and electricity? Can coal plants be resupplied if rivers and canals are frozen, rail operate in extreme cold and snowfall?

Can we supply our baseload with clean coal and nuclear, our variable demand with natural gas, and use renewables to extend the life of our NG supply? Can our NG production and supply system be made flexible, operate at low end of capacity to allow supply increase to meet demand shocks at same time wind and solar output may be low?

Does “doing something to prevent climate change” give a false sense of security?

One of the organizers has posted at WUWT. This is part of it. They also say no recording will be distributed.
N. Preservati May 29, 2018 at 6:00 am
I am one of the organizers of this event and thought I would reach out to this forum to answer several of the questions asked in the comments section. We have asked each panelist to answer two questions: 1) to what extent does science show man-made CO2 emissions are accelerating climate change; and 2) based upon the first answer, what mitigation needs to be done to offset the effects of man-made CO2 emissions on the climate.

Truly silly questions. So now not only is climate changing, the change is accelerating! Compared to what? Is there a natural constant rate of climate change?

And of course the second question presupposes, hence implies, an alarmist answer to the first. (If the answer to #1 is no, then presumably #2 does not arise. Depending perhaps on what accelerate means. And climate change. And whether it is good or bad. But I digress into the swamp of inevitable confusion.)

The second question would be tough for Judith when she claims not to talk about policy. However, promoting adaptation over mitigation is likely what we will see, and yes, that is policy. Maybe we will be surprised given that she is now not talking to oil-funded congressional committee chairs, and she will come out for clean energy and energy efficiency or nuclear power.

‘Two overarching policy response options have been articulated in response to climate change: mitigation and adaptation. Both of these policy options exist in context of a broad and complex policy environment that involves energy, transportation, agriculture, economics, security, and land use practices.

Climate-related decisions involve incomplete information from fast-moving and irreducibly uncertain science. In responding to climate change, we need to acknowledge that we cannot know exactly how the climate will evolve in the 21stcentury, we are certain to be surprised and we will make mistakes along the way.” JC

Focus on emissions reduction relies on the myth of a stable and predictable ecology in equilibrium if not for man.

Assumption that CO2 is destabilizing rather than stabilizing force.

Find common ground on energy security. Make grid ready to accommodate any path we may choose in coming decades. Subsidies may be warranted on various levels to make sure industry exists if needed and problems identified and fixed early. Variable renewable can extend NG supply.

Four experts with very different views in 1.5 hours provides no time for actual debate. The promoters clearly do not understand this. Assuming no intro time (not possible) then if each expert gets just 15 min to present their initial position that leaves just 30 min for discussion, with each expert averaging just over 7 min.

Or with no initial positions you can all just be asked silly questions, like “what fraction of climate change is due to humans?”

Is any unofficial recording forbidden? Then the event would only have an entertainment value. You mention Mann’s contract, is he a driving force behind this? As some parts of his contract have apparently leaked, how much money does he get?

If there’s no official recording then that is further reason for Prof. Curry to take the dignified, less confrontational approach I suggested above. The true audience will be the other people in the room who are likely to be educated academic types, not protagonists in the climate wars.

This appears to be a low-stakes event and there’s little reason to pick a fight on the assumption she will gain points by being bad-ass and less “nuanced”. We can leave that approach to guys like Mark Steyn to whom an aggressive style comes naturally.

Snow falls on top of Greenland. The ice piles up and gets heavy enough to flow to the ocean. The flowing ice forms ice shelves and the shelves calve and the ice thaws and cools the ocean. The most calving occurs in the coldest times when the ice shelves are extended to most. That is why the coldest times are the coldest. It don’t snow as much in cold times and the ice on Greenland depletes and the ice shelves retreat. The least calving occurs in the warmest times because the ice flow is the least. That is why warmest times are the warmest.

While ever-present climate change is, indeed, undeniable, it’s not just the attribution to human causes that is highly questionable. Given the lack of definitive physical grasp of in situ thermodynamics and adequate reliable data on our oceanic planet, the very degree and extent of global change is in serious doubt. What “expertise” exits on this issue is steeped in academic hubris seen previously only outside the realm of rigorous science.

Sound science is a disciplined pursuit of quantitative comprehension of reality. That post-modern “climate science” fails repeatedly to meet that exacting standard is apparent, inter alia, to many professional climatologists. There’s nothing emptier than fanciful obiter dicta from those who have never done ANY rigorous science, but assume the posture of scientific gurus in the blogosphere, which they flood with uncomprehending verbiage.

The Nilometer record, which ends before the industrial revolution. sheds no light on the central question of the debate: whether there has been AGW since then. It’s replication here is pseudo-erudition.

Dr. Curry,
Get whatever material you can from this debate as the others answer the questions posed. Defend your position in the debate as you see fit.

But I would also suggest that you take notes (especially about what Mann says), and do a point by point rebuttal (as closely as you can) afterwards. Record your “after debate” statement / rebuttal and provide all the back up you can via video.

Make the video as long as you need it, so you can answer in the way that plays to (what I observe) as your greatest strength.

Then post that video on Vimeo, YouTube, and then take one of those two and post it here on your blog with a text summary and links.

Be sure to put the words “A response to [insert all the names here]” as the first few words under the video. Bold the names if you like, that will add SEO impact. Also include the exact title of the debate that you mentioned in this post. A bonus would be to have it transcribed it and post that transcription in the rebuttal post.

Contrary to previous analyses, new research published by Michigan State University shows that projected changes in temperature and humidity will not lead to greater water use in corn. This means that while changes in temperatures and humidity trend as they have in the past 50 years, crop yields can not only survive – but thrive. –Michigan State University, 16 May 2018

This pressure on developing nations to deploy renewable energy solutions they cannot afford is both political and financial. The UK and international organisations such as the European Investment Bank and the World Bank stopped funding coal plants in developing countries. The consequences of this overly restrictive policy? Developing countries remain in the dark, increasingly frustrated by what India’s chief economic adviser termed the west’s “carbon imperialism”. Investment in coal-powered plants in African countries could mean the difference for millions of people between being able to turn on the lights at night or living in darkness. — Colin Stevens, EU Reporter, 25 May 2018

It is all eminently sensible – in contrast to the climate tragics here – and the visiting wack jobs from WUWT. Hi there. It is the basis for if not a consensus then art least a coalition. I suggest that Judith newly embrace her neo-liberal tendencies.

“This pragmatic strategy centers on efforts to accelerate energy innovation, build resilience to extreme weather, and pursue no regrets pollution reduction measures — three efforts that each have their own diverse justifications independent of their benefits for climate mitigation and adaptation. As such, Climate Pragmatism offers a framework for renewed American leadership on climate change that’s effectiveness, paradoxically, does not depend on any agreement about climate science or the risks posed by uncontrolled greenhouse gases.” https://thebreakthrough.org/archive/climate_pragmatism_innovation

As a fiscally conservative liberal – not in the American sense – it seems obvious that energy subsidies should be confined to the costs of first of a kind production. For wind and solar – that time has passed. For new nuclear technologies that promise cost reductions as a result of high efficiency, much greater fuel burn, a radically reduced waste stream, standardized factory manufacture and decommissioning, modular design and small footprint – that time is now. Much of this new nuclear technology is inherently safe, proliferation resistant and produces a fission product waste stream that decays to background radiation levels in 300 years.

I am not an energy purist – anything that supplies reliable, efficient, low cost energy in a free market is good enough. Natural gas and high efficiency – low emission coal plants are at this time the right technologies in many situations. Especially in the developing world. But with dwindling supplies and escalating demand for energy the crunch will come sooner or later and 21st century energy sources will pay off in spades. At which stage the creative destruction of capitalism will transform the energy landscape.

“The first SMRs are expected to be within the range of natural gas plants costs assuming appropriate private-public partnerships to help reduce technology risks and keep first-of-a-kind costs low. The partnerships incentivize the initial SMR customers by addressing typical first-of-a-kind challenges that create unique regulatory, technology and financial risks that translate into higher costs that most companies are unable or unwilling to accept. The partnerships reduce the barriers to technology adoption and allow the learning curve to bring down the cost of future SMRs. By 2030, after the first few plants begin operation, SMRs would be cost-competitive without further private-public partnerships. For most scenarios, the costs of SMRs are within the range of natural gas plants, such that a utility could choose an SMR based on factors such as long-term price stability and fuel
diversity. The tremendous potential for SMRs justifies further investment in SMRs and private-public partnerships to support first movers. Successful commercialization of SMRs – a critical addition to the nation’s future
infrastructure – is essential to a resilient low-carbon energy system, growing jobs and the economy, and to strengthening national security.” http://smrstart.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/SMR-Start-Economic-Analysis-APPROVED-2017-09-14.pdf

Beyond that is a need to address emissions across sectors and in diverse gases. Emissions are being addressed pragmatically across a plurality of gases and sectors with a plethora of technologies and systems – underpinned by economic growth and development – in which technical innovation plays a key role in the economic efficiency dividend.

There are millions of people across the planet transforming agriculture and forestry – and millions more conserving and restoring ecosystems – with benefits for agricultural productivity and the environment. While drought proofing agriculture and mitigating downstream flooding. This new land use revolution is essential to guaranteeing food security this century and reversing the ongoing loss of both species richness and abundance. Much of the 180 billion tonnes of carbon lost globally since 1750 can be returned to soils and biomass – although that is far from the governing raison d’être.

As I am wont to say – the objective this century is to build prosperous and resilient communities in vibrant landscapes. But frankly they can only build themselves with hopefully a little sympathetic policy – supporting Lomberg’s ‘smart development goals’ for instance. Increased agricultural productivity, increased downstream processing and access to markets build local economies and global wealth. Economic growth provides resources for solving problems – conserving and restoring ecosystems, better sanitation and safer water, better health and education, updating the diesel fleet and other productive assets to emit less black carbon, developing better and cheaper ways of producing electricity, replacing cooking with wood and dung with better ways of preparing food thus avoiding respiratory disease that kills millions every year and again reducing black carbon emissions. All this has implications for population growth.

Aspiring modernists in Brazil, Russia, India and China are copying America in many respects, economically– scientifically though… they’re scientific sceptics when it comes to buying into AGW. Nothing we do is going to change that. Is it a matter of culture is more a matter of the scientific method and common sense.

“The increase in temperature between 1910 and 1940 was virtually identical to the increase between 1970 and 2000. Yet the IPCC does not attribute the increase from 1910–1942 to human influence,” says Greenpeace founder and Leftist environmental heretic Dr. Patrick Moore who then asks, “does the IPCC believe that a virtually identical increase in temperature after 1950 is caused mainly by human influence, when it has no explanation for nearly identical increase from 1910 to 1940?”

Has Patrick Moore dismissed that half of the 1910-1940 increase could be because of solar strengthening and half from CO2, while the later increase was dominated by CO2 because the sun wasn’t net doing much in that timeframe. Then it follows that the CO2 effect has accelerated between these two periods, and that continues to the present day.

As it turns out, “the modern Grand maximum (which occurred during solar cycles 19–23, i.e., 1950-2009),” says Ilya Usoskin, “was a rare or even unique event, in both magnitude and duration, in the past three millennia.” The Old Farmer’s Almanac seems to have a better grasp on causation than Western academics.

Even wiki seems to understand that changes in solar activity have an influence on Earth’s climate. Generally, “solar activity is well confined within a relatively narrow range,” says Usoskin. But what happens in an extreme case of solar activity –e.g., how about a, 3,000-year solar activity record? We know because we just lived through it –i.e., a period of global warming.

The TSI change between 1900 and 2000 was some 0.125 W/m2 – not enough to make a difference. There is a chaotic and quite obvious internal response that modulated temperature and TOA power flux on a decadal scale.

It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.

Robert Ellison In one sentence you said this
“I am not an energy purist – anything that supplies reliable, efficient, low cost energy in a free market is good enough.”

And in another sentence you said this

“Successful commercialization of SMRs – a critical addition to the nation’s future
infrastructure – is essential to a resilient low-carbon energy system, ”

And you also provided a pie chart of greenhouse gases.

You are a coward who sits on the fence but who doesn’t say that you are sitting on the fence. My take is; you are an alarmist who is afraid of all the flak you would get for truly expressing which side of the fence you are sitting on.
At least us skeptics have the courage to say that global warming is a hoax but on most alarmist sites we are prevented from doing so because the supposed debate is over. It will never be over until the truth is realized by almost everyone that global warming is by far the biggest hoax ever committed on mankind. And my proof? Look at the 61 reasons that I gave to Judith as talking points in a post near the top

To quote Schneider:On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand…

There is no other hand, the other hand is corruption of the scientific process.

If a GHE has been observed, some scientist has no doubt proposed a testable hypothesis to explain this phenomenon.

If it can’t be tested by experiment, it ain’t science. If it doesn’t fit observation – the Earth’s surface is no longer molten, ie it has cooled, hottest places on Earth have least supposed GHGs in the atmosphere, increasing the amount of CO2 between the Sun and a thermometer don’t make the thermometer hotter . . .

No science. Just mad assertions – pseudoscience of the climatological variety.

Lawyers getting publicity.
I do not mind if the setting and questions are fair.
They seem to have done some work to prevent fracking and oil exploration.
Might be an idea to revisit that previous senate discussion.
Titley and Mann are likely to revisit their previous comments some of which had big holes in and some which sounded substantive.
–
“there was testimony from a witness invited by committee Democrats—former Navy Rear Admiral and current Penn State meteorology professor David Titley.””Titley said. “Let’s talk about orbital decay. Let’s talk about overlapping satellite records. Let’s talk about stratospheric temperature contamination. I think Dr. Christy and Dr. [Roy] Spencer, when they’ve put this out, they have been wrong, I think, at least four consecutive times.”
–
Not sure the best way to take out this argument but it has to be put to rest.
eg.
Satellites use the best scientific equipment we have for being able to measure the different temperature layers of the earth. They enable way more coverage, especially of the sea, mountains and remote desert areas than we can ever get from earth based instruments. They give it in real time and enable calculation of the earth’s energy lloss as well which conventional systems do not.
They are strictly calibrated against different types of earth, sea and air [balloon] based temperature systems and do not use an imperfect grid based system with fault algorithms and adjustments.
The scientists are fully aware of issues of drift and work rigorously to update them. The overlap of satellite records is good as it enables a further cross checking and verification that the temperature assessments are as accurate as possible.
Anyone else up for a go?
Or make this better and more point size?

“Satellites use the best scientific equipment we have for being able to measure the different temperature layers of the earth. They enable way more coverage, especially of the sea, mountains and remote desert areas than we can ever get from earth based instruments. They give it in real time and enable calculation of the earth’s energy lloss as well which conventional systems do not.
They are strictly calibrated against different types of earth, sea and air [balloon] based temperature systems and do not use an imperfect grid based system with fault algorithms and adjustments.”

You realize that is all false. Earth based systems report hourly and in some cases by the minute. Satellites sample an area twice a day, and at Different times. Which means you need a model to correct them to a standard time.
Coverage? The land system already OVERSAMPLES the globe. You can see this by decimating the land stations and see that the answer doesnt change/ They are not calibrated to different types of of earth. The algorithm ASSUMES one emissivity for all land ( wrong for snow and ice for sure)
Calibrated to radiosonds? the sond record itself is a pile of junk as steve mcintyre has pointed out. More adjsuted than any record
Mountains? They cant measure higher mountains because of contamination. Faulty adjustments? If you look at UHA the changes from version to version are HUGE.. which says the structural uncertainty is high.
Faulty algorithms? wanna talk about UHA bad land mask? Nope cause you dont know crap abou the algorithms cause you never read them. you cant even point to the UHA source code

They bear no resemblance to the views of visiting WUWT wack jobs, resident ideological dinosaurs – both sides – an occasional skydragon experimenting with hot plates in his basement, or a pompous ass with the mental age of 15 and vague complaints about scientific imprecision invalidating the entire field. While there may be 20 or fewer exceptional papers a year – the rest is dross – that is the way of progress in natural philosophy.

The quantum mechanics of AGW are undeniable.

Ironically – a WUWT graphic.

The effects are seen from space. Not as anthropogenic radiant imbalances – that are inherently unrecognizable against background variability. But – through narrow apertures – as confirmation of photon scattering predicted from quantum mechanics.

Climate’s fundamental mechanism is deterministic chaos involving regime changes at periods from decades to ages. “Abrupt climate changes were especially common when the climate system was being forced to change most rapidly. Thus, greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. The abrupt changes of the past are not fully explained yet, and climate models typically underestimate the size, speed, and extent of those changes. Hence, future abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate surprises are to be expected.” https://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/2

Hence we get to the need for mitigation and adaptation – whatever the source of change or extreme weather is – rather than 61 varieties of head in the sand. The need to build prosperous and resilient communities in vibrant landscapes – as discussed in my comment above.

Look I can see how you want Judith to put your picayune thought bubbles to Michael Mann. I’m sure she will get back to you.

“Look I can see how you want Judith to put your picayune thought bubbles to Michael Mann. I’m sure she will get back to you.”
A debate is not won on eminently sensible and competently expressed views or there would be no debate.
You would have won years ago.
A debate is won by picking the topics the opposition argues with and formulating an attack which sensibly and competently expressed grinds them into the dirt. Mann is difficult, but too cocksure. Titley argues with trite standard SKS soundbites and should be easily shot down with the right preparation.

The event is billed as a conversation rather than a debate – in a conversation one looks for common ground. The nonsense expressed above is not that. Nor are the views they urge remotely those of Judith Curry. She is not a skeptic in the sense that these people hope for. In any sense really.

Her views were made available just a couple of weeks ago – but it factors not at all into the delusional agenda they patronisingly promote. Cultural dinosaurs in every sense it seems.

Disagreement is best because there is no agreement about the unknowns and certainly not about the ignorance. “Uncertainty” is itself highly ambiguous. The warmers use it to mean how bad will AGW be, while the skeptics mean is there even a problem? This is a classic Kuhnian case of different paradigms talking past one another.

but we are not ignorant, you may be , but the science knows what it knows within limits. Unless your product is doubt. Then you sell ignorance.
there is no ignorance that c02 is a ghg
no ignorance that GHGs Warm the planet.
there is no ignorance, in fact Judith has science, that comports with the canonical estimates for ECS.
we have enough knowledge to decide that dumping c02 at will comes with
risks. and we have a good idea how severe these risks could be.

Steve, can you give me a straight answer as to why there has been no empirical scientific experiment that concluded that increased atmospheric temperature was caused by an increased atmospheric CO2 concentration, greater than the laboratory results? To get CAGW, the atmosphere needs an overall positive feedback from H2O – have you found it?

Typical sleight of hand.
That GHGs warm the planet does not mean that increasing CO2 will increase the warming.
ECS is an abstraction that tells us nothing about what is happening or will happen.
We therefore have no such knowledge as is here claimed. In fact the observational evidence is all against this purported risk.
Perhaps the greatest ignorance is of logic.

At $20 a seat it will be interesting to see who comes, and how many? Relatively few students I would think. This is the Coal Capitol so maybe some legislators. I do not see a provision for press passes, which may limit coverage.

Uncertainty implies unpredictability. Climate paradigms have progressed from ideas of equilibrium to purely periodic – white noise on a rising trend. Natural variability sums to zero in this paradigm – especially in the late 20th century it seems.

Now for something real. What Demetris Koutsoyiannis calls structured random.

Between skydragons and catastrophists there is little uncertainty. My problem with both is the obsession of both with narratives superficially in the objective idiom of science with implied mitigation or not mitigation implications.

The problem of not mitigation is that it is an argument from complete ignorance. The mitigation proposed by catastrophists is almost exclusively focused on the electricity sector. The latter both expensive and ineffective.

There are two problems with wind and solar. Multiple gases.

And multiple sectors.

Long ago arguments were made for a multi-gas – including black carbon – and multi sector approach as the most effective low cost response. Pick the low hanging fruit. Emissions are being addressed pragmatically across a plurality of gases and sectors with a plethora of technologies and systems – underpinned by the innovation dividend and resultant economic growth and development. Although this seems to be occurring below the surface turbulence of skydragon and catastrophist storytelling.

Uncertainty creates the impetus to focus on pragmatic emission reductions regardless of short term climate variability. The bottom line is that the right questions to ask about climate change – forced or intrinsic – are not scientific but about appropriate responses to diverse human and environmental challenges.

There is no uncertainty. It’s certain that AGW is wrong. All that’s needed is to demonstrate the complete lack of correlation between CO2 levels and global warming — also sea level. You DO tend to wimp out, Judith, when you try too hard to be “fair” by presenting both sides as though they were comparable. They are not and you need to say that. I really wish you’d consult the following post on my “mole in the ground” blog, which succinctly and clearly provides all the evidence you’ll need — not that you are not already aware of all this evidence, but that you appear to lack the will to present it with confidence and determination. See http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2018/05/thoughts-on-climate-change-part-6-let.html

”As anthropogenic CO2 emissions do not dominate the CO2 content in atmosphere, and as even total content of CO2 in atmosphere does not dominate the climate temperature, the influence of CO2 from fossile fuels – and even from other anthropogenic CO2 sources – is so minimal that it cannot be distinguished from zero. This means that cutting of anthropogenic CO2 emissions from any anthropogenic source is unnecessary and causes only losses.”

I hope to attend, but if I can’t I hope people in the audience can ask a few of the following questions:
1) If you control for H2O and isolate the impact of CO2 on atmospheric temperatures, you find that CO2 has zero impact. Antarctica, the ideal control for H2O, shows no warming over the past 50 years and 33% increase in CO2.
2) The only defined mechanism by which CO2 can affect climate change is through the GHG effect and thermalization of 13 to 18 micron LWIR. Those wavelengths don’t penetrate or warm the oceans. Given ocean cycles control the atmospheric temperatures, how can you blame CO2 for atmospheric warming when it can’t warm the oceans.
3) The Hockeystick and recent NASA Sea Level chart show multiple dog-legs which don’t line up. What about the underlying physics of a CO2 molecule, which shows a log DECAY, could ever explain a dog-leg is temperatures and sea level, especially when they don’t match on each chart.
4) The N Pole and Greenland show sub-zero temperatures most of if not all of the year and evidence shows the ice and glaciers are melting FROM BELOW!!! How does CO2 cause warm oceans and geothermal activity to melt the glaciers?
5) Long-term instrumental temperature data controlled for H2O don’t show the warming claimed in the hockeystick, why don’t thermometers argee with the hockeystick?
6) Climate models based upon CO2 being the main driver of climate have failed miserably, why is that?
7) MODTRAN shows that CO2 has zero impact on the layer of the atmosphere where all ground measurements are taken. The CO2 signature isn’t identified until an altitude of 3km when H2O precipitates out of the atmosphere. Why are you right and MODTRAN wrong in modeling CO2?
8) The physics of the CO2 molecule is that it thermalizes LWIR between 13 and 18 micron. Those wavelengths have a blackbody temp of -80 degree C. How do these low energy wavelengths warm anything?
9) Washing my black car the other day I burned by hand from steam from my wash cloth. A black car in the shade and exposed to the identical LWIR CO2 back radiation was cool. How can CO2 cause these huge temperature differentials? Or is the claim that CO2 causes record daytime temperatures simply false?

Write down all the questions that you and your friends can think of that your constituents in this debate (i.e., the lay public) are asking. “Do I need to be afraid?”, “Aren’t 97 percent of scientists telling me I need to be afraid?”, “I get that there is uncertainty, but if there is any significant doubt at all, shouldn’t we invest now to diminish the risk?”, “what about those hurricanes!?” Prepare to answer those questions simply, repetitively and sharply. Always bring the questions of science back to what is relevant to people.

Mann is a street fighter. Street fighter wins against the only reasoned and measured. Study his points and prepare rebuttals (subject to the simplicity rule). Bring your guts and attitude.

The moment Deniers of the deniers say “now that is a fair point,” the house falls. Which is why they’ll never say it.
Don’t let him get away with misdirection. Have an agenda: what are the three most significant things (again, that a lay person can understand and see is important to their lives) that the Consensus doesn’t and can’t explain away, and pound them home. What do you want people to remember?

Judith, also focus on the opportunity costs. Every wind or solar farm represents a school, hospital or bridge that isn’t being built.The cost of fighting climate change, the natural state for the climate, is measured in the trillions of dollars.

BTW, another question to ask Michael Mann is, ” would you point to the place on this chart where the climate isn’t changing?” Al Gore’s chart is 600,000 of documented continual climate change.

“would you point to the place on this chart where the climate isn’t changing?”

I thought most people were over this silly segue. Do you really think that the term Climate Change means something as basic as “climate would not change without man?” We know there are both man-made and natural forcings, and to show a chart of natural change does not mean CO2 is not a farcing.

No scientists would ever ask that. The term Global Warming was too frightening for pollster Luntz’ audience, and he suggested that Climate Change replace Global Warming to help alleviate their fears of having to do something about it. Apparently it worked.

Sure. Normal is when the forcings are natural. Abnormal is when man’s contributions can be observed. It’s a huge planet, and one argument is that man cannot possibly change the climate, which is not true of course.

Optimal climate would be having temps change at a rate consistent with natural forcings. It will not be fun or cheap to build walls, move cities, move farmlands to the land that opens up as more arable and abandon former land, and watch as existing hot and arid land suffers.

We should seek policy that does less to change the climate than is natural. The change is temps is not natural, and winners and losers are being determined around the globe for locations that may not be causing as much change per capita. It would be common sense and more WWJD if we were to make a change in a positive direction for us and other countries.

The picture of the advertising flyer states that this debate is open to the public. But, it is not being transmitted to the public, nor is it recorded. The only “public” involved here are those who have the time and inclination to go to the site and want to shell out $20 to be seated. It is also a closed venue. I hope Judith does well, but for me – I want the hidden science to come out into the open and be available for all to see. I am tired of the 40+ years of this effort.

Curry and Moore can pre-record thei opening statements and post it to YouTube at the time of the debate with a challenge to Mann and Titley to do the same. Then, do the same with a post debate commentary.

Yes, this is going the added kilometer, but the record will be clear for guiding red team v. blue team analyses. At least for outlining the big picture and where the uncertainty monster has its lair.

In a debate on human-caused climate change it is important to remember that the United States only has 4% of the global population and less that one-seventh of global emissions. Further, American emissions are falling, but aggregate global emissions are rising.
Therefore, if the aim is to reduce global emissions the most significant political battles are not with President Trump but with the Governments of the majority of nations where emissions are likely to increase for many years.
For climate scientists, accepting political realities will enable them to concentrate on the area where they could have the greatest impact if climate change is real. That is focussing on the where, when, type and magnitude of possible adverse impacts. The first step is to eliminate the wildly speculative and unsupportable nonsense of recent years.

Judith, a suggestion from a former champion debater. Simplify for the audience. We used to prepare question reply ‘points’ on 3×5 index cards. Forces brevity and clarity, important for the audience. The modern political equivalent is sound bites. Prepare sound bites.

I don’t know what will “work” with that venue, with that audience, with those opponents, but I know what I would like to see.

1. Prepare assiduously, as for a PhD comprehensive exam, qualifying exam, trial, or thesis defense. Not on a debate team as ristvan had been, I nevertheless got to watch a college debate team prepare, and they worked at it hours per day, several days per week.

2. Make a list, perhaps on index cards as described by ristvan, and as used by the team I watched, of propositions that you want to present, questions that you want to ask, propositions that you want to dispute, and questions that you expect to be posed to you; and to accompany them list the references that address what you want to say — if you do use index cards, the reference lists can be on the back sides of the cards. When you run out of time or meet the press and others after the end of the formal debate, you can hand out copies of these (if not cards) and refer to them when people ask for more debates.

3. Do not get sidetracked into defending yourself against ad homs or criticizing the characters of your opponents. That uses up your time and takes the attention of the audience away from the science that (I think) you want to focus on.

4. Somebody should record the debate, at least the audio, and prepare an exact transcript (as close as possible) of the presentations, Q&A, and everything. There have been instances of prominent people denying that they had said what they had said, and we are lucky that their statements had been recorded.

5. When interrupted say something short and snappy like “Let me finish” — and then continue with what you were saying. Don’t get sidetracked thinking about how rude, obstreperous, etc anyone is, but stay focused on your message.

“…since Mann was able to dominate because all of the Democratic members focused their questions on him.”

Stop with the crying about politics. Get to the science and allow the public to be informed. The US has far too many people who read things from people who have nothing but a political argument (Heller is the best/worst example), and they gloss over the science we do understand. Only then can you begin to discuss what can be done.

This “it’s too complicated to be understood” is a silly premise. The human body is extremely complex, but we do know a fever when we see and measure one. You can talk all day about how body temperatures change, and the many ways that it can happen, but when a super majority of doctors tell you that an infection is causing the spike, you best not listen to the one doctor who insists that body temp have been this high before, and that nobody took your temperature at 1,000 locations, and that this may actually be good for you! Oh, and look at the graph of your temperature in Kelvin to see that it hardly spiked anyway.

Earth is warming. Ice melting, permafrost thawing, migrations patterns changing, sea levels rising, and until someone proves that the primary forcing is not CO2, we need to concentrate on CO2.

Scott, I am still looking and waiting to be informed that there has been an empirical scientific study that concluded that CAGW was confirmed with a conclusion that increased atmospheric temperature was caused by an increased atmospheric CO2 concentration. Scott, can you send me a link to one such study? Computer program results don’t count. It is silly to throw the ball over the fence and say “prove us wrong”, no – the burden of proof belongs to you!

Scott, I am aware of the greenhouse effect of doubling of atmospheric CO2 which results in a temperature increase of about 1.5C, Where is the “C” in CAGW? Just send me ONE reference (without computer modelling) that concludes that increased atmospheric temperatures are caused by increased atmospheric CO2 concentration (more than about 1.5C). I have been reading Judith Curry’s blog for some time now – and have not had the pleasure of such a reference. If you can’t put your hand on one right now, I understand…

Jim D, Thank you for the link to your graph; it does show a correlation between atmospheric CO2 and atmospheric temperature. But, it does not show causation, nor does it answer where the “C” in CAGW resides. A 2.3C rise for a CO2 doubling is not “C”. I am just an Engineer, but I do understand the dilemma the proponents are in. The longer we wait for global warming to show up, the closer we come to losing the public confidence that we know what we are talking about. Don’t forget: “we don’t know what we don’t know”. Attribution is the most important question to answer. Still waiting for an empirical study addressing that issue.

Both the forcing and the warming rates tripled in the period shown. The warming kept up with the emissions acceleration, and there is physics to explain that correlation. It would have been more surprising based on physics if these curves did not match.
Obviously the IPCC does not label it as CAGW, just AGW. CAGW is a skeptic straw man because you have to define catastrophic yourself. Is it 4 C of warming? Is it 2 meters of sea-level rise? Is it increased heatwaves, droughts, fires and floods? Is it loss of ecosystems? This is going to be an assessment made by governments for their people or those in other countries, so by the time you get to that question, you have gone into national policies. Planning has to account for the climate in the 21st century pushing the extremes harder, and noticing that 20th century statistics don’t hold up.

Jim D – thank you for the graph. There sure does look like the two are closely linked! Just like the graph demonstrated by Al Gore in his movie. However, how do you know that one causes the other? Is there an empirical study, utilizing the Scientific Method that concluded such? Computer programs do not count. In addition to that, I would think the satellite measurements of temperature would be better because of the methodology. Can you produce a graph similar to the one you presented here that uses UAH data; do you get the same correlation? Also, you are alluding to “fossil fuels”, when we know that 1/2 of the CO2 increase is due to land use. Air temperatures are all “manipulated” – can you produce a graph that plots actually measured temperatures? Also, the CO2 is from Hawaii, do you get the same graph from points in the Southern hemisphere? We know that we are observing an extremely complex natural system – how do you filter out all of the chaos? Have you read the Charney Report from 1979? They reported the same range of temperatures for a doubling of CO2 as is currently projected by the IPCC. It seems odd to me there has been no refinement of that in over almost 40 years – even with all of the money going into research. One additional large question is: what is the total effect of clouds on the increasing temperatures? I’m sorry, I still have a lot of questions about the attribution of the cause for the rising temperatures.
Thanks, Jeff

If there’s two things skeptics don’t trust, it’s models and data. The rest is presumably fine. If you don’t even trust data, I don’t see that as my problem to solve. As for attribution there is ocean heat content data that shows the energy imbalance to still be positive even after all this warming. That means we still lag the forcing change and the forcing change is almost entirely anthropogenic. Again, that’s just observed data, no models. There is so much forcing that it easily accounts for all the warming we have seen. The fit of the data gives over 2 C per doubling as a transient rate, again no models. It’s a last resort move to not trust the data, especially as no one has come up with a skeptics’ replacement for it. They just say no way, can’t be true, largely based on their preconceptions rather than any alternative data analysis.

Jim D, I do appreciate our dialogue. As I have said previously I am just an Engineer, but I have been interested in Nature and Environmentalism my entire life. Some parts of my career reflected my concern for anthropogenic pollution. I understand the difference between science and politics as well as between a theory and natural law. We are all attempting to understand the weather (climate) system. I just don’t think we are there yet. If it turns out that atmospheric CO2 does not control atmospheric temperature – and we spend $Trillions worldwide to change the outcome based on that, then we have wasted all the time and money used. I started this quest in 2008 and have not yet found enough evidence to convince myself that we have a definitive answer. I hope that this “debate” is a start for scientists with opposing views can agree to disagree and further the science.

Given the data, we can calculate that for each 1500-2000 GtCO2 emitted, we get an extra 1 C of warming. This is equivalent to the current rate for 40 years. That is, it is 1 C per 40 years even if the emission rate doesn’t grow, which it will under business as usual just by population growth and development. This also gives a sense of kind of temperature change we have control over by 2100 alone. Depending on policy, global emissions can vary over a range of about 5000 GtCO2 or about 3 C. Policy matters. The largest uncertainty factor for future climate is our global emissions.

Using the metaphor of a ‘super majority of doctors’ telling me I have an infection . . . Well, never happens. One doctor with an opinion (an informed opinion) and then perhaps a second or third opinion. Nowadays we also get AI and a computer database to chime in. The point is to choose the right metaphor – or better yet, stick with the science as we ‘know’ it. I tell my students that the metric is key to understanding, following Protagoras that man (not Mann) is the measure of all things. So, if there are social and environmental consequences, and there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ones, leave that for a separate discussion. I decried basing my doctoral research based on fear factors (like mass urbanization will lead to more communism – that was poli sci in the 1970s and beyond). I stuck to what seemed to me more important at the time – a theoretical methological study of a squatter settlement in a large city. So, my druthers is that we need less of the sky is falling and more of the here and now. Better metaphors for this debate.

“The point is to choose the right metaphor – or better yet, stick with the science as we ‘know’ it.”

Sure, which is why getting to a discussion of a solution is hard when so many people pretend that CO2 is not the biggest solvable forcing. It is clearly the knob that we are turning, and one that can be turned forward or back more.

If your answer is a dumbed down version of chaos theory to explain it all away or wave around the Uncertainty Monster, it’s worse than useless. It really will be a setback for Climate Skeptics. You need to forcefully and unequivocally state that the global climate over the past 150 has behaved as it usually does; the trends are benign; and Mann and others are using flawed (if not deliberately contrived) computer models to create a scary version of Science Fiction. (fine, at the end you can trot out a few words about Chaos Theory as the “deep” flaw in the CAGW rhetoric.)

I think he will “mesmerize” the audience with simple facts. Earth is warming, and CO2 is the primary forcing. Curry will agree, of course, because she’s a scientist who cannot look foolish like some “scientists” who claim the data is fudged or manipulated.

Mann should point out that it would be fun to watch someone cherry pick the years that were called the hiatus. Curry testified in 2014 that she thought the hiatus would run through 2030, and the IPCC would look foolish. Today she would never say that, but she based a lot of testimony on what she thought was a real hiatus. It was a simple blip.

Now Curry seems to be saying “Here’s natural temps, and here’s some warming, but now look at the next slight rise which could be natural, but then again warming, but look again…”

Not the sun. Oceans do not produce heat but move it around. Clouds are a feedback. Curry is simply trying to muddy the waters at this point.

At this point it’s best to read the transcript and evaluate 1) whether catastrophe won out over reality? 2) whether anyone cited Lomborg’s economic prioritization of what dollars are spent, and 3) who got the loudest applause.

From all the arguments stated here, it doesn’t seem that the forum will be productive for getting the various publics to grasp climate change. Too many moving parts, too little time and too much emotion.

You have a tall job ahead. A politician arguing political correctness has something like a ten to one advantage over a scientist arguing fact, or worse, the absence of accepted fact.

Here are some reasons why I am a skeptic.

The average temperature statistic Global Temperature Anomaly (GTA) is not a temperature and does not (accurately) describe the heat in the atmospheric system. Observed changes in GTA may be due to fluctuations in moisture content rather than heat, or just winds stirring things around.

While I accept the validity of the radiative transfer calculations as shown in Petty’s book, the calculated changes in temperature due to CO2 are not observed. So the simple model for CO2 warming is falsified and science must reject it or expand the model.

But what about all the GCM’s which “predict” the observed GTA? Dan Hughes blog here established that GCM’s are semi-empirical, that is, they are hybrids — part statistics and part science. It is inevitable that GCM’s reflect the historical data to which they are tuned. But history may not predict the future.

Climate change? With respect to what? Weather data is known to be fractal and correlated on all time scales. There is no statistical support for using 30 years as the proper period over which to establish a baseline average of any weather related variable. Neither are there any published significance levels: 0.5C? 2C? noone knows so everyone can guess.

The bible (“seven fat years, seven lean years”) notes that weather can be correlated on annual scales; 30 annual temperatures are not 30 independent samples. Mandlebrot and Koutsoyiannis among others consider such matters. Maybe in 7*30 years or so we can establish or deny a statistically significant GTA.

I wish you well Dr. Curry, but I’ve noticed you seem to think that human beings MUST HAVE some influence on climate, even if it is not significant or cause for concern, when there is no evidence we have any influence at all. Humanity has virtually no understanding of how our climate systems work, or how they change; and as you know it is extremely complex and chaotic with massively influential variables like the oceans, sun, water vapor, clouds, wind, gravitational pull, etc. and many unknown variables. Fluctuating levels of CO2 had no ability to change the climate in the past, why would it now? That view plays into the hands of activists like Mann and the others who believe Humanity is a threat to the Planet, using ‘human-caused climate change’ and Globalism as their two most powerful tools of deception to gain global control of energy, and hence of industry and human endevour. Erhlich and his protoges like Mann and others believe they know best for the Environment and that Humanity must be controlled by a global government lsimilar to the UN or the EU. This is an age-old attempt to develop a Tyranny for control. The whole scheme, in my view, may be an instinctive atttemp to prevent the rise of other groups, like developing nations, not to “save the planet” as they claim. No affordable energy for developing nations.

Earth is warming with slightly dropping solar irradiation. How is the energy being trapped? CO2.

Stratosphere is cooling. Why? CO2.

As long as the “skeptic” side keeps politics out of this and sticks to the science, this will be an interesting discussion. Ever read Watts or Heller? Pure politics. Ever read a real climate science paper? There’s your science, and I’m including much of Curry’s work less her politics and crying about how other scientists are political.

it is extremely complex and chaotic with massively influential variables like the oceans, sun, water vapor, clouds, wind, gravitational pull, etc. and many unknown variables.

We have ice core data that shows us that one variable correlates with temperature changes better than any of the other known factors. One variable that always correlates with temperature is ice extent. When earth is colder, ice extent is always more. When earth is warmer, ice extent is always less. Over fifty million years, earth got colder and colder, following repeating cycles, as the ocean circulations changed, and more and more warm tropical water circulated into polar regions, promoting more snowfall in cold places and supporting more ice on land.

Ice does cool earth and ocean by thawing and reflecting. Ice volumes on land does regulate ice flow rates. Warm thawed oceans promote more snowfall that increases ice volumes on land. Cold frozen oceans promote less snowfall that allows ice on land to deplete.

These ice cycles resonated with other factors, sometimes in phase and sometimes out of phase. The major ice ages were extreme examples of these ice cycles. The major cold ice ages happened because they follow major warm periods when warm ocean water was providing massive moisture for massive snowfall. Major snowfall can only occur when major warm water is available to provide the energy and moisture. When ice was sequestered in temperature climates, the ice thawed and the cycles repeated. Gradually more ice was sequestered in cold places, Antarctic, Greenland and high mountains until there was not enough water left for another major cycle. We are now in the new normal, there is enough water in the oceans to provide moisture for a little ice age but not another major ice age.

This is the climate theory that does make sense. This was published by Maurice Ewing and William Donn in the 1950’s and was taught to me by Tom Wysmuller in 2008. I have polished my explanation of it since then.

If you consider ice to be a major factor in the evolution of climate over the past fifty million year, climate is orderly and understandable. If you consider ice to be a result of the other factors, you get chaos.

The Op Ed in today’s WSJ by Steven Hayward is worth reading as a reminder: “Scientists who are genuinely worried about the potential for catastrophic climate change ought to be the most outraged at how the left politicized the issue and how the international policy community narrowed the range of acceptable responses. Treating climate change as a planet wide problem that could be solved only by an international regulatory scheme transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers. Causes that live by politics, die by politics.”
So, for those espousing social justice instead of the sciences, the creedal problem fosters an illusion of thinking.

Mann is a good debater using lies, personal attacks, fear mongering and anything else.. He is the type who will bring a gun to a debate and if you go low, he has already been lower than you would ever imagine even doing…..

Thinking about the debate.
What really, really get’s Mann’s goat is the accusation by our friend Mark Steyn that Mann tortured the data until it confessed.
While not very nice this is one little line that Judith could have up her sleeve in case Mann gets nasty.
Just say that his results were not robust [shudder], not reproducible [double shudder] and his gave the same hockey stick even when using upside down data [faint], despite what Steyn said about treating the data severely.. Throw in the kicker, say MacIntyre [He must hate him] showed this completely. Then ask why he sued the Canadian fellow but would not produce his 20 year old data in court [past copyright surely].
Perhaps, if from Seattle, Judith could even say Hokey stick in that lovely northern accent and pretend she was saying hockey stick.
As a friend of mine says, “What a winner”, even if dirty tactics.